ÉCOLE DE TECHNOLOGIE SUPÉRIEURE UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC
THESIS PRESENTED TO
ÉCOLE DE TECHNOLOGIE SUPÉRIEURE
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR
A MASTER’S DEGREE WITH THESIS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ENGINEERING
M. A. Sc.
BY Sadia AZEM
EVOLUTION OF THE EMERY-TRIST MODEL ON THE CAUSAL TEXTURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS
MONTREAL, APRIL 13, 2015
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BOARD OF EXAMINERS
THIS THESIS HAS BEEN EVALUATED BY THE FOLLOWING BOARD OF EXAMINERS
Mr. James Lapalme, Thesis Supervisor
Department of Software Engineering and IT, École de technologie supérieure
Mr. Don de Guerre, Thesis Co-supervisor
Department of Applied Human Sciences, Concordia University
Mr. Marc Paquet, Chair, Board of Examiners
Department of Automated Production Engineering, École de technologie supérieure
Mr. Mickaël Gardoni, Member of the jury
Department of Automated Production Engineering, École de technologie supérieure
THIS THESIS WAS PRESENTED AND DEFENDED
IN THE PRESENCE OF A BOARD OF EXAMINERS AND THE PUBLIC ON MARCH 16, 2015
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to express my eternal gratitude to my supervisors, Pr James Lapalme and Pr Don de Guerre, who have been everything that one could want in a supervisor. Their expertise, invaluable suggestions, support, encouragement, understanding, and patience made this work successful and enriched considerably my experience.
I would like to express my deep gratitude to the jury members, Pr Marc Paquet, and Pr. Mickaël Gardoni for their interest in my work, their time and effort in reviewing it, and their precious feedbacks.
I am grateful to my colleagues for their encouragement and support.
I owe my eternal gratitude to my family for their unconditional love, support and encouragement in particular my parents, my mother in law, my husband, my brothers, my brothers in-law, my sisters, my sisters in-law, my nephews and nieces, and my aunt. I am also eternally grateful to my soul mate (my husband) for his invaluable help. I am truly grateful to my baby for giving me happiness.
I am deeply grateful to my friends for their support and friendship.
Finally, I would like to warmly thank all the people who contributed in some way to the work reported in this document.
ÉVOLUTION DU MODÈLE DE EMERY-TRIST SUR LA TEXTURE CAUSALE DES ENVIRONMENTS ORGANISATIONNELS
Sadia AZEM RÉSUMÉ
Le modèle de Emery-Trist sur la texture causale des environnements organisationnels est fondamental. Il a été développé et testé sur plusieurs décennies. Il fournit des renseignements clés pour le design d'organisations durables. Ce modèle développe le concept de l'influence mutuelle entre une organisation et son environnement et, en décrivant la texture de l'environnement, il contribue à définir la stratégie d'adaptation d'une organisation à l'environnement. Au fil des ans, de nombreuses contributions ont été apportées au modèle ; cependant, il existe un manque de synthèse de ces contributions, ce qui le rend difficile à comprendre, et donc à mettre en œuvre ou à développer davantage. Une revue systématique de la littérature sur le modèle semblait nécessaire pour retracer son évolution au fil des ans. Nous avons déterminé les principaux auteurs qui ont contribué au modèle, leurs principales contributions, ainsi que les convergences et les divergences entre eux. La synthèse qui en résulte fournit aux praticiens une vision sur les points de discorde existants. En outre, les divergences identifiées apportent une valeur ajoutée pour les chercheurs en mettant en exergue des pistes de recherche qui méritent d'être explorées. Intégrer les concepts de ce modèle dans des approches d'architecture d'entreprise permettrait à ces dernières de concevoir ou reconcevoir des organisations durables.
Mots clés: Architecture d'entreprise, texture causale, système ouvert, coévolution
EVOLUTION OF THE EMERY-TRIST MODEL ON THE CAUSAL TEXTURE OF ORGANIZATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS
Sadia AZEM ABSTRACT
The Emery-Trist model on the causal texture of organizational environments is foundational and has been developed and tested over many decades. It provides key insights into building sustainable organizations. This model develops the concept of mutual influence between an organization and its environment and, by describing the texture of the environment, it helps define the adaptive strategy of an organization to the environment. Over the years, many contributions have been made but there is a lack of synthesis of the contributions, making it difficult to understand, and therefore implement or develop the current state of affairs. A systematic literature review of the model seemed necessary to trace its evolution over the years. We determined the main authors and main contributions, as well as the convergences and divergences between them. The resulting synthesis provides value to practitioners by identifying points of contention of which to be aware. Moreover, the identified divergences provide value to researchers as topics for further investigation. Integrating the concepts of this model in enterprise architecture approaches would help them to design or redesign sustainable organizations.
Keywords: Enterprise architecture, causal texture, open system, system-in-environment co-evolution, systematic literature review
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
INTRODUCTION ...1
CHAPTER 1 LITERATURE REVIEW ...5
1.1 Literature review on enterprise architecture ...5
1.2 Literature review on reviews on the ETM-CT ...10
CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW METHODOLOGY ...13
2.1 Comparison between literature review types ...13
2.2 Purpose and research questions ...15
2.3 Search process ...15
2.4 Selection process ...16
2.5 Challenges concerning the gathering of relevant studies ...17
2.6 Data extraction (collection)...18
2.7 Synthesis of studies (data analysis) ...18
CHAPTER 3 BACKGROUND ...19
3.1 Origin of causal texture ...19
3.2 Open system and its components ...19
3.3 System-in-environment co-evolution and directive correlation ...20
3.4 Types of causal textures ...21
3.5 Ideals ...22
3.6 Maladaptive strategies ...23
3.7 Parameters of choice behaviour ...24
3.8 Design principles ...24
3.9 Inter-organizational domain and the referent organization ...25
CHAPTER 4 RESULTS ...27
4.1 Authors who contributed the most to the ETM-CT ...27
4.2 Authors’ contributions to the ETM-CT ...27
CHAPTER 5 DISCUSSION ...35
5.1 Convergences between authors ...35
5.2 Divergences between authors ...35
CHAPTER 6 LIMITATIONS OF THE LITERATURE REVIEW ...41
CHAPTER 7 IMPLICATIONS OF THE ETM-CT ON ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH ...43
CHAPTER 8 FUTURE WORK ...47
APPENDIX I SELECTED STUDIES ...51
APPENDIX II REJECTED STUDIES...55
APPENDIX III KEY CONTRIBUTIONS BY STUDIES ...61
APPENDIX IV SANDWICH STRATEGY ...67
APPENDIX V IDEALS DEFINITIONS ...69
LIST OF TABLES
Page Table 2.1 Number of hits by selection criteria ...16 Table 2.2 Number of selected references found by each search source ...17 Table 3.1 Sets of ideals by historical period as proposed by different authors ...23 Table 3.2 Relationships between parameters of open system, parameters of choice
behaviour and maladaptations ...25 Table 4.1 Main contributing authors and main contributions ...34
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
EA Enterprise Architecture
ETM-CT Emery-Trist Model on the Causal Texture of organizational environments ETSP Emery-Trist Systems Paradigm
OST Open Systems Theory SLR Systematic Literature Review STS Socio-Technical System
INTRODUCTION
Organizations evolve in rapidly changing and dynamic environments with high levels of complexity, uncertainty and inter-relations, which threaten their success, stability and even their survival. Indeed, even large organizations can be at risk of disappearing despite being leaders in the market (e.g., Kodak, Motorola and Nortel). As the world has witnessed over the last decade, even goverments are at risk of imploding (e.g., Grece). Consequently, in order to be sustainable, organizations must learn how to deal with uncertainty and manage complexity and their inter-relations; they must actively adapt to their environments by defining strategies that integrate, in addition to their internal inter-relations, inter-relations with their environments and the inter-relations of several actors within those environments.
Entreprise architecture (EA) helps organizations overcome the challenges of managing complexity (Laplame and de Guerre, 2014a). Therefore, adopting enterprise architecture is important for any organization wishing to survive in these uncertain and complex times. The term enterprise architecture can be used as either a noun or a verb (Laplame and de Guerre, 2014b). Enterprise architecture as a verb refers to engaging in purposeful activites related to designing an enterprise. Enterprise architecture as a noun can refer either to a model of an enterprise (i.e., a model such as defined byArchiMate) or as the current state of an enterprise. In this report, we focus on enterprise architecture as a verb.
Despite the benefits put forward by the community related to persuing enterprise architecture, it appears that a good number of enterprise architecture teams are not very popular within their organizations (DeGennaro, 2010). Indeed, current frameworks of enterprise architecture do not rely on complete models that integrate adaptation of the organization to its environment.
This vision of the organization, as an organism that coevolves with its environment through continuous bidirectional transactions (referred to as system-in-environment) is the very core of the Emery-Trist model on the causal texture of organizational environments (ETM-CT).
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The causal texture represents the inter-relations between the parts of the environment of an organization. Originally developed by F. Emery and Trist (1965), and subsequently advanced and used by other authors, this model has multiple uses: (1) it discusses the characteristics of an environment; (2) it leads to the emergence of concepts fostering adaptive strategies in an organization in relation to its environment and (3) it helps an organization take advantage of the opportunities present in the environment while protecting itself from its threats. To our knowledge, it is the most complete model that defines the concept of systems that evolve within and with their environments (i.e., system-in-environment). In addition, the model provides valuable knowledge in the form of active adaptation strategies for coping with different environment types. This knowledge about an organization and its environment is crucial for enterprise engineering, and incorporating this model into the design process of enterprise architecture will help an organization to design or redesign itself in a sustainable way.
While reviewing the literature, and given the great value of the model with regards to organization sustainability, we were surprised to discover that there is a lack of studies that summarize and synthesize contributions to the model. It was hard to trace the development of concepts related to the model. Moreover, the existence of divergences between authors demonstrated the importance of conducting a literature review to assess the state of the art of approaches concerning the ETM-CT. To obtain a high-quality literature review, we chose to adopt a systematic literature review methodology (SLR).
The primary contribution of this study is to offer a synthesis of the model’s evolution, which has not previously existed, shedding light on how the ETM-CT has evolved. The particular emphasis on identifying divergences between contributions enables practitioners to understand points of contention and provides researchers with possible topics needing further investigation. Another major contribution is the introduction of the ETM-CT to the enterprise architecture community.
This report is structured as follows: CHAPTER 1 outlines the focus of other literature reviews related to the model; it also reviews if existing EA approaches integrated a complete model fostering active adaptation of an organization to its environment and if they at least integrated the relationship between an organization and its environment; CHAPTER 2 describes the review process we conducted (SLR methodology), as well as its specificities; CHAPTER 3 consists of the definitions of certain concepts introduced or developed by the model and the associated studies; and CHAPTER 4 summarizes the findings of the review, which are discussed in CHAPTER 5. CHAPTER 6 enumerates the limitations of our SLR methodology. CHAPTER 7 exhibits some implications of the ETM-CT on EA research, and finally, CHAPTER 8 presents insights related to our future work.
CHAPTER 1
LITERATURE REVIEW
The aim of conducting this literature review was twofold: on one hand, to investigate if EA approaches exist that integrate a complete model that fosters the mutual influence between an organization and its environment, as is the case with the ETM-CT (subchapter 1.1). On the other hand, the goal was also to determine if a literature review exists that analyzes and synthesizes the evolution of the ETM-CT (subchapter 1.2).
1.1 Literature review on enterprise architecture
As previously mentioned, one of the main contributions of this study is the introduction of the ETM-CT to the EA community. This model can certainly help the design or redesign of sustainable organizations by providing concepts fostering adaptive strategies of organizations in relation to their environments. Hence, the objective of this literature review is to outline state of the art of EA approaches that have tackled the issue of integrating the relationship between an organization and its environment. To our knowledge, there is no such study in the literature. We focused primarily on determining if a complete model of an organization’s adaptation to its environment (as is the case with the ETM-CT) is used by EA approaches.
In this subchapter, we analyze the key studies we found in the literature on EA related to the topic of system-in-environment. While literature reviews on EA exist, they do not have the same focus as our study. We used these reviews to derive insights on the relationship between an organization and its environment and on the use of the ETM-CT. We enriched our analysis by discussing references of EA promoting organizations’ interaction with their environment. We concluded that even if some EA approaches use some principles of adaptation of the organization to its environment, current EA frameworks do not rely on a complete model that integrates adaptation of the organization to its environment.
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As shown in the results of the literature review on EA conducted by Tamm et al. (2011), EA is positioned between IT and business strategy formulation, on the one hand, and project-focused solution architecting on the other. Drawing on the findings of the literature review, the paper proposes the Enterprise Architecture Benefits Model (EABM), in which EA leads to organizational benefits through its impact on four key benefit enablers: organizational alignment, information availability, resource portfolio optimisation and resource complementarity. The study of contextual (internal or environmental) factors led Tamm et al. to suggest that under some circumstances some (large and more complex) organizations are better positioned to benefit from EA investment. Also, EA can improve an organization’s flexibility and change capability. However, the authors suggested further investigation of contextual factors and encouraged the improvement of the EABM model, as there was no theoretical basis to guarantee the completeness of the model. Hence, the study encourages the investigation of the internal inter-relations of an organization and its interrelations with its environment. It also shows the need to use a complete model that is developed on a theoretical basis. This is the case of the ETM-CT, as we show in this report.
After a review of the key literature on EA, Lapalme (2012) highlighted the emergence of three schools of thoughts in regards to aligning scope and purpose of EA; each school of thought has a unique belief system consisting of definitions, concerns, assumptions, insights and limitations. According to the author, these schools of thoughts represent ideals around which EA approaches gravitate. They are:
• Enterprise IT Architecting: EA is centered on aligning information technologies with an organization’s strategies. The objective is to effectively enable the business strategy by using the proper and optimized IT capabilities;
• Enterprise Integrating: EA aims to ensure an organization’s consistency (coherence between its parts) by designing all its facets and effectively implementing its strategy; • Enterprise Ecological Adaptation: EA is focused on representing the organization in its
environment. It enhances the organizational innovation, coherency and sustainability, and it promotes ecological learning.
It appears that the Enterprise Ecological Adaptation school of thought is most appropriate in regards to helping the organization to assess and improve its adaptive capacities to the environment and to represent all internal and external inter-relations. In opposition, the Enterprise Integrating school of thought only manages its environment. Note that these two schools of thought adopt holistic visions leading to outcomes representing all the enterprise aspects (facets) and jointly optimizing the social and the technical systems. Lapalme (2012) listed some references on EA approaches classified in the Enterprise Ecological Adaptation school of thought. Although the author tackled the system-in-environment co-evolution between the schools of thoughts, which were compared in part to the management of the internal and environmental interrelations of organizations, the author did not investigate the ETM-CT, which integrates all the principles listed in the paper.
According to Simon et al. (2013), the evaluation of well-known frameworks by Leist and Zellner (2006) suggested that, in general, there are several areas for methodological improvement; Langenberg and Wegmann (2004) concluded that the framework of Zachman (1987) was, at the point of publication of their article, the most referenced framework, after which Buckl et al. (2009) concluded that “The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF) has become the most prominent approach in practice,” (in Simon et al., 2013, p. 4) showing the dominance of the Enterprise IT Architecting vision. Schmidt and Buxmann (2011) found that stakeholders’ participation and communication were considered of less importance than architecture governance for the success of EA management. All these studies demonstrate that EA approaches do not lead to the design of sustainable organizations, as the organizations cannot adapt to their environment. Indeed, these approaches do not take into account all the internal interrelations of an organization or integrate the relationship between an organization and its environment. These interrelations, which are demonstrated by the ETM-CT, are reported in our report as being among the conditions necessary to ensure an organization’s sustainability. Note that the development of the model was based on strong theoretical ground resulting from the contributions of scientists from different fields. This analysis of previous literature reviews cited by Simon et al. (2013) exploring EA research through the study of academics’ and practitioners’
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publications showed that there is a gap between theoretical foundations and practical issues in EA research and that research has been more concerned with the business organization than with the business strategy and model.
According to Wegmann (2003), the purpose of EA is to align more effectively enterprises’ strategies with their processes and resources (business and IT). Wegmann argued that “Business and information technology (IT) integration is essential for enterprises to achieve their competitiveness” (p. 1) and defined an enterprise model as a representation of “the resources found in the enterprise and in its environment, together with the processes in which they participate” (p. 2). The author discussed the importance of the concept of a systemic paradigm in system sciences to provide necessary theoretical foundations to EA. The author argued that his systemic paradigm would improve enterprise architects’ understanding of the existing methodologies, therefore improving their capacity to explain the practical problems they face. The author presented the Systemic Enterprise Architecture Methodology (SEAM), which is an application of his systemic paradigm. This methodology can be supported by a tool. The author highlighted the need for a shift in paradigm and promoted some principles present in the ETM-CT but emphasized that these principles are not sufficient in regards to adaptive strategy of decision making defined by ETM-CT.
Lapalme and de Guerre (2014a) developed a framework about complexity and its management. They then discussed the EA schools of thought proposed by Lapalme (2012) related to their associated perspectives on complexity management. They proposed a design perspective of EA to offer a comprehensive approach to manage complexity resulting from working towards organizational sustainability. Hence the authors presented the key guidelines, assumptions, implications, and limitations of this perspective grounded in open socio-technical system theory (OST), which was developed essentially from the ETM-CT. Note that OST is a specific theory promoting system-in-environment co-evolution and joint optimization of its interrelated social component (people, culture, norms, interactions, roles, etc.) and technical component (technology, tools, materials, etc.). Emery and Trist (Trist, 1981) proposed the socio-technical systems theory, which includes the ETM-CT. Indeed,
Babüroǧlu (1992), in reviewing the Emery-Trist Systems Paradigm (ETSP), showed that ETSP developed in four tracks, the last three of which concerned the ETM-CT (see subchapter 1.2). Note that the version of OST used by the authors in this paper used some concepts developed by F. Emery about which there exist divergences between contributing authors to the ETM-CT. These divergences are discussed in CHAPTER 5. The authors transformed the main principles promoted by that theory into principles to integrate into an EA approach. Finally, Lapalme and de Guerre (2014a) provided a comparison between their perspective and typical EA methodologies.
Rabaey (2014, p. 99) defined complex systems as systems that “interact with an environment where a high degree of uncertainty exists.” The author referred to complex adaptive systems as dynamic systems that have to adapt their goals, means and structure in order to survive in an unstable environment as it evolves rapidly. For this purpose, the author proposed a concept of EA, named Complex Adaptive Systems Thinking – Enterprise Architecture (CAST-EA). This concept is based on the Cynefin framework, which makes the organization and/or its parts aware of their possible contexts and where “The context defines the unique environment in which the system is situated (Gharajedaghi, 2011) which requires permanent observing and intelligence (Rabaey et al., 2012)” (in Rabaey 2014, p. 103). The author discussed types of contexts and the adaptation of organizations to them. The CAST-EA concept aimed to avoid the damage for the organization that may be caused by Cynefin dynamics if the organization is not aware of the shift from one context to another. This concept supports an agile organization. Rabaey (2014) showed that the concept of intelligence increases and assesses existing knowledge, and supports decision making by reducing uncertainty. CAST-EA promotes a holistic vision of the organization, which is considered as an open system. We noted that the author promoted some principles and concepts present in the ETM-CT independent of the model. However, in the ETM-CT, humanity has shifted between environments through its history. It is now experiencing a turbulent environment and the objective of the adaptation strategy of the ETM-CT is to transform the environment of an organization into a more stable one with less uncertainty, inter-relations and complexity.
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Villarreal (2014) presented an analytical framework that aims to integrate the many elements of sustainable development and their interrelationships and that fosters a systemic perspective. The objective was to highlight the advantages of the EA approach to improve sustainable development. The author believed that presenting a systemic description of sustainable development would attract and facilitate contributions from practitioners of EA. The author integrated only some principles of adaptation to ensure sustainability. The proposed framework does not rely on a complete model, such as the ETM-CT.
This literature review exhibited that different authors have demonstrated the importance of integrating some concepts present in the ETM-CT into EA approaches. This suggests that it would be interesting to introduce the model to the EA community. Indeed, the added value of this study is to exhibit a model that fosters the system-in-environment co-evolution and how this model evolved through time. In addition to the principles that have been proven as critical to an organization’s sustainability, convergences and divergences between authors were identified, shedding light on the points of contention that will help researchers and practitioners to develop the model further and provide principles to EA approaches to design or redesign sustainable organizations.
1.2 Literature review on reviews on the ETM-CT
To our knowledge, no prior study has analyzed the evolution of the ETM-CT, which is the focus of our study. Indeed, the studies reported in this subchapter only partially reviewed the model and provided only partial and fragmented information on its evolution. Merrelyn Emery (2000) summarized some of the key concepts that are related to the model and mentioned divergences between Fred Emery, Trist, and Ackoff regarding some concepts.
Babüroǧlu (1988) wrote a literature review that focused on only one portion of the model (i.e., the vortical environment) as defined by Emery and Trist (1973). His paper highlighted the lack of studies on the topic, citing only four: Emery and Trist (1973), Emery (1977), Crombie (1972) and McCann and Selsky (1984).
Babüroǧlu (1992) reviewed the Emery-Trist Systems Paradigm (ETSP) through four publications that reviewed and summarized this model. The aim of the paper was to introduce the model to a stream of systems thinking known as critical thinking. The author showed that ETSP developed in four tracks, the last three of which concerned the ETM-CT. The first track tackled the joint optimization of socio-technical systems. The second track integrated the concepts of system-in-environment co-evolution and active adaptation. The third track promoted the concepts of inter-organizational domain and referent organization as a means for active adaptation to turbulent environments (Trist, 1983). The fourth track focused on refining the conceptualisation of environment types initially defined by Emery and Trist (1973). The author analyzed the four tracks in relation to the heuristics of social systems design developed by Ulrich (1983) based on the purposeful systems model of Ackoff and Emery (1972), which helped derive some concepts of the model.
CHAPTER 2
LITERATURE REVIEW METHODOLOGY
As previously mentioned, the focus of this study is the analysis and synthesis of the evolution of the ETM-CT. Accordingly, a review of contributions pertaining to the model was crucial. Hence, we identified the systematic literature review (SLR) methodology as the most appropriate means for guiding our review, as explained in the next subchapter.
2.1 Comparison between literature review types
Conventional literature review
There are two types of conventional literature reviews (Kitchenham and Charters, 2007; Okoli and Schabram, 2010):
Literature review as the theoretical foundations and context of a research question: This type of literature review is often labeled a “literature review” or “theoretical background review” and is relevant for studies that seek to:
• Bring the research question into focus (e.g., journal papers);
• Identify important methods, information or people in the field of the study; • Justify funding and grant applications;
• Help practitioners make decisions;
• Introduce material that is less easily available.
Literature review as a chapter of a graduate thesis: The thesis literature review aims to: • Synthesize the understanding of a student on a research topic;
• Justify the novelty of the student’s work and future research in general;
• Constitute a basis of an analysis and a synthesis of the research topic for future academic discussion;
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• Welcome “the student into scholarly tradition and etiquette” (Okoli and Schabram, 2010. p. 3).
This type of literature review provides a basis for future work by describing the content and quality of available knowledge. Indeed, the results of the studies reviewed are considered as data for the literature review. It is only when the review synthesizes the available material and offers a scholarly critique of theory that it becomes valuable research.
Stand-alone literature review
Stand-alone literature reviews (e.g., SLR) can vary “from little more than an annotated bibliography to scientifically rigorous syntheses of a body of primary research” (Okoli and Schabram, 2010. p. 4). An SLR-guided study follows a systematic, rigorous, explicit, comprehensive (completeness in the coverage of the literature), open-minded and transparent methodological approach to enable the replication of the study. This type of study aims to produce an identification of all relevant studies, evaluations and syntheses to produce a critical analysis of a body of knowledge related to the topic expressed as research questions.
The SLR methodology was initially developed and used in medical-related research as a means for systematically collecting, analysing and synthesizing results across multiple studies (Fink, 2005). Today, the SLR methodology is used in other fields such as information systems (Okoli and Schabram, 2010), the social sciences (Hart, 1998; Petticrew and Roberts, 2006), and business management (Rousseau et al. 2008), which are fields concerning our study.
Hence, our study was conducted according to the prescribed practices of the methodology (see Kitchenham and Charters, 2007; Okoli and Schabram, 2010 for details and examples of the SLR methodology and its stages). The following subchapters present the main phases of the study, which are the purpose of the review and related research questions, the search and selection processes, the data extraction (collection) and the synthesis of the selected studies. In CHAPTER 6, we discuss the consistency of the review by presenting its limitations.
2.2 Purpose and research questions
Our study focuses on investigating the following research questions: How did the Emery-Trist model on the causal texture of organizational environment evolve over the years? The underlying sub-questions are:
1) Who are the authors who contributed the most to this model? (RQ1) 2) How did they contribute? (RQ2)
3) What are the similarities and differences between these authors? (RQ3) 2.3 Search process
Relevant sources were defined, the search was performed. To obtain a comprehensive literature review, the studies used were selected from:
• Search results on digital libraries Scopus, Inspec and Compendex, which were scanned every 14 days from May 2014 until the report submission date;
• Publications of F Emery, Trist and M Emery;
• Previous works on open systems theory that the authors were aware of; • Reference lists of papers, such those of Babüroǧlu and McCann; • CVs of authors that wrote about the model such as Selsky;
• References from the moderntimesworkplace.com website related to the Tavistock Anthology. The Tavistock Institute is where F Emery and Trist conducted their first work on the model.
The search started with one set of keywords (“causal texture” or “turbulent environment”) and was refined by adding “open system” and limiting the results to social science studies, when possible. These additional search criteria were used because, in the previous search results, the keywords only appeared in the titles of references and not in the text body. The numbers decreased significantly after search refinement (Table 2.1). Please note that the numbers in Table 2.1 don’t represent unique studies because there are overlaps between the digital libraries.
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Table 2.1 Number of hits by selection criteria
Database Keywords Search criteria Number of
studies found
Scopus causal texture causal texture 625
causal texture AND open system AND
social and human sciences 63 turbulent environment turbulent environment 4160
turbulent environment AND open system AND social and human sciences
78 Compendex and
Inspec causal texture causal texture AND open system causal texture 4 0 turbulent environment turbulent environment 606
turbulent environment AND open
system 1
For all the keywords, quotation marks were used. The term “social and human sciences” refers to a filter criteria on the discipline and not a keyword.
The list of publications of Fred and Merrelyn Emery was mostly derived from the list of references of M Emery’s papers. Some of their publications are also available on the Tavistock Anthology website. The list of publications of Trist was provided by his life partner and exists on the same website.
2.4 Selection process
All obtained studies were scanned and rejected if the keywords existed only in the reference list. If not, parts of the text of the study were read, including the keywords. After that inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied. Twenty-four studies were included in the literature review (see Appendix I) and 38 were excluded (17 did not develop the model and we did not have access to 21) (See Appendix II and Appendix IV for an analysis of the references). All studies that contributed to the development or enhancement of thinking on the model to which we had access were selected. With regards to the studies for which we didn’t have access, two mitigations strategies were used; these strategies will be discussed in a later section.
Table 2.2 summarizes the selected studies count by source. Please note that the sum of counts is greater than twenty-four because some studies were found via multiple sources.
Table 2.2 Number of selected references found by each search source
Search source Number of selected references found Scopus
Inspec and Compendex
7 0 Publications of Emery F, Trist, E and Emery, M. 14
Previous studies 14
Reference lists 13
CV 4 Tavistock 13
2.5 Challenges concerning the gathering of relevant studies
We faced two challenges related to gathering relevant studies. The first challenge was regarding the accessibility of older publications written by Trist and F Emery. It was not possible to get access to all the articles we identified that were published by F Emery and Trist. Local publishers had published many of the older articles in hard copy and in limited numbers. Consequently, only a very few copies exist today in foreign country libraries (i.e., Australia and England). For example, according to Emery (1977), there were five contributing studies to the model made by him and/or Trist (see Appendix IV); Emery also referred to other works, for instance with Ackoff and with Trist, that helped develop the concepts of the model. We could not access these works. In Trist (1983), while the author identified thirteen contributing publications by him and/or Emery, one of which was by Emery and Emery (see Appendix IV), we were only able to access five. The second challenge was with regards to obtaining complete bibliographies for F Emery and Trist. To our knowledge no official and complete bibliography exists for both authors; this was confirmed by Beulah Trist, Trist’s life partner, and Don de Guerre, a close collaborator of F Emery.
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These challenges were mitigated by: (1) using a “sandwich” approach: articles written by the author that were published just before and after each inaccessible article were compared. If no divergences were identified, it was assumed that the inaccessible article did not contribute new concepts; (Appendix IV discusses another way to use the sandwich strategy; it concerns the case where a study cannot be sandwiched between two publications of the same author published just before and after the study); (2) using experts to validate the analysis and assumptions: Alan Trist, Trist’s son and an organizational specialist mentored by F Emery who worked with his father’s concepts during the 1960s at the Tavistock Institute and afterwards in the United States, and Dr. Don de Guerre, an expert in organizational design and development who worked closely with F and M Emery for many years.
2.6 Data extraction (collection)
For each study, the following information was collected: authors, year of publication, title, source, reference, concepts (related to the review) and content related to each of these concepts.
2.7 Synthesis of studies (data analysis)
Selected studies were presented chronologically to analyze the evolution of concepts (RQ). The contributing authors (RQ1) and their contributions (RQ2) were identified. Convergences and divergences were highlighted (RQ3). Selected and rejected studies are listed in Appendix I and Appendix II respectively. Also the key contributions per study are summarized in Appendix III.
CHAPTER 3
BACKGROUND
This chapter presents the concepts related to ETM-CT for which there is an agreement between the authors contributing to the model. However, we included definitions of other key concepts for which divergences exist between authors. These divergences are discussed later in the document.
3.1 Origin of causal texture
In 1965, Fred Emery and Eric Trist extended von Bertalanffy’s (1950) open systems theory with the concept of the causal texture of the environment (a term suggested by Tolman and Brunswik (1935) and drawn from Pepper (1934)). The causal texture of the environment added a formal conceptualization of the environment component, where the authors dealt with processes in the environment (Emery and Trist, 1965), in comparison to the original open systems theory.
3.2 Open system and its components
An open system differs from a closed system by the fact that it is conceptualized as participating in bidirectional transactions with an external environment that is independent of the system. The conceptualization of a closed system does not include the concept of an environment. What the causal texture brings to the original conceptualization of an open system is the interrelations between the parts of the environment (Emery and Trist, 1965). Therefore, the conceptualization of bidirectional transactions between a system and its environment led the authors to create the four parameters (or components) of an open system (Emery and Trist, 1965; Emery, 2000): L11, L12, L21 and L22 are lawful connections
designated by (L), which expresses inter-relations, and the suffixes 1 and 2, which designate the system and its environment, respectively. They are illustrated in Figure 3.1.
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The meanings of the parameters are:
• L11 represents the system’s internal interrelations.
• L22 is the causal texture, which represents the environmental interrelations between the
environment’s parts, also called contextual environment according to Ramirez and Forssell (2011).
• L12 is the planning function. It represents the transactions from the system, through which
the system acts on the environment.
• L21 is the learning function. It represents the relations from the environment to the
system, through which the system is informed about the opportunities the environment offers to the system and the way the environment constraints the system.
Figure 3.1 Parameters of open system
3.3 System-in-environment co-evolution and directive correlation
The overall evolution process of a system and its environment resulting from their bidirectional relationship defines the concept of system-in-environment co-evolution. The way a system and its environment co-evolve may be represented as a process named directive
correlation over time (Sommerhoff, 1969; de Guerre, 2000). Co-evolution is motivated by
to evolve in the same direction with respect to initial conditions and goals. The system and the environment influence each other, leading to a new set of conditions that would be the next initial conditions.
3.4 Types of causal textures
F. Emery and Trist derived and conceptualized four ideal types of causal textures experienced by humans, also called the Emery-Trist levels of organizational environments (Babüroǧlu, 1988). They defined a fifth type, but did not conceptualize it. The causal textures are (Babüroǧlu, 1988; Emery and Trist, 1965, 1973; Emery 2000; Trist, 1981):
• Type I: Random placid. This type is the simplest form of environment that can be experienced by humans. Elaborating tactics are sufficient to adapt to it. Any action gives one chance of two to success;
• Type II: Clustered placid. This type is static. The values are stable, and it is composed of cooperative systems (i.e., organizations). Most of human history has been spent in this type, from 50000 B.C to the industrial revolution in the 1790s. To adapt to this environment, a system has to elaborate strategic and tactical planning (based on its knowledge of the environment);
• Type III: Disturbed reactive. This type of environment did not last for very long (from the 1790s to 1950s). It appeared with the industrial revolution. The introduction of mechanism and bureaucracy transformed organizations such that maladaptive responses started to appear. Only large, technocratic and bureaucratic organizations that had expertise to make competitive challenge and maximize their independent power could survive. Organizations in competition had the same information and wanted to reach the same part of the environment and they knew that their competitors were aware about it; • Type IV: Turbulent environment. This is the type of environment in which we presently
live. High levels of inter-relations, complexity and uncertainty characterize this type. As it is dynamic (like Type III), the context changes rapidly. Organizations experience instability. To adapt to this environment, turbulence should be managed to recreate a new form of Type II environment. In opposition to Type III, an organization should take into
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account not only interactions with other competitive systems but also interactions with others parts of the environment;
• Type V: Vortical environment. The environment will be vortical when it reaches extreme degrees of complexity and dynamic inter-relations, and the turbulent conditions continue to persist and the maladaptive responses of organizations to turbulence are accentuated (as a result of a failure of the organizations’ adaptation strategies to the environment).
3.5 Ideals
Based on the characterization of causal texture types, it appears that contemporary organizations are evolving in dynamic and rapidly changing environments with high levels of complexity, uncertainty and inter-relations (i.e., turbulent environments). Such conditions can threaten the stability of organizations. This context forces organizations to actively adapt in order to succeed, or at least not disappear. Organizations are populated by humans who, by their very nature, are ideal-seeking. They may contribute to a system’s adaptation to a turbulent environment by pursuing ideals. The sets of ideals proposed by Emery and Ackoff (1972), Emery (1977) and Trist in Emery and Trist (1973) are outlined in Table 3.1. Indeed, Trist outlined ideals related to the industrialism (column 1) and post-industrialism (column 2) periods. For the post-industrialism period, Emery and Ackoff also proposed a set of ideals (column 3), which was modified by Emery (column 4). For each ideal, the associated ideals per author(s) and period are given. Emery (1977) offered an interesting survey of how the set of ideals evolved from those of Ackoff and Emery (1972) to those proposed by Emery (1977). However, Emery (1977) did not compare them with those of Trist.
Maladaptive strategies appear if the ideals are not pursued and not pursued as a set (Emery and Emery, 1979). The pursuit of ideals and maladaptive strategies affect decision-making by offering people and organizations a broader range of choices, hence offering more chances of adaptation (Emery, 1977). The pursuit of maladaptive strategies reduces choice, and therefore hinders the chances of adaptation.
Table 3.1 Sets of ideals by historical period as proposed by different authors
Emery and Trist1 Ackoff and Emery2 Emery3
Industrialism1 Post-industrialism Transition Post-industrialism
Achievement Self-actualization Truth Nurturance
Independence Interdependence Plenty Homonomy
Self-control Self-expression Good Humanity
Endurance of distress
Capacity for joy Beauty Beauty
Table developed by Emery (1977); 1 Emery and Trist (1973), 2 Ackoff and Emery (1972), 3 Emery (1977)
Table 3.2 presents the relationships between parameters of open systems (column 1), parameters of choice behaviour (column 2), passive maladaptive strategies (column 3) and active maladaptive strategies (column 4). This table was adapted from the one by Alvarez and Emery (2000). Note that the correspondence between parameters of open systems and parameters of choice behaviour has been changed over the time (Emery, 1977; Emery and Emery, 1979; Alvarez and Emery, 2000). In addition, there is a divergence between the correspondence of parameters of open systems and passive maladaptations (Emery, 1977; Babüroǧlu, 1988). The modifications and divergences between authors are reported and are discussed later in this document.
3.6 Maladaptive strategies
Maladaptive strategies are divided in two types: passive and active. The passive forms are defenses against turbulence most usually expressed by the people at large. The active ones are attempts to reduce uncertainty and complexity mostly expressed by elites to initiate strategies aiming to achieve those ends; they are the correlates of the passive maladaptive strategies (Crombie, 1972; Emery, 2000). Passive maladaptive strategies include segmentation, dissociation, doomsday and superficiality (Alvarez and Emery, 2000; Emery, 1977). Active maladaptive strategies include authoritarianism or law and order, evangelicism, social engineering and synoptic idealism (Alvarez and Emery, 2000; Crombie, 1972). Note that maladaptive strategies are also referred to as maladaptive responses or
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maladaptive scenarios (Emery, 1977), maladaptions (Alvarez and Emery, 2000; Toffler in Crombie, 1972) or maladaptations (Crombie, 1972).
3.7 Parameters of choice behaviour
Ackoff and Emery (1972) (in Emery (1977)) defined four parameters (conditions) of choice behaviour:
• Probability of choice, which is the probability for a person to make a specific choice dependent on what fits the best for him;
• Probable effectiveness, which is based on the knowledge of the effectiveness of the courses of action;
• Relative value of the intention leading to choice;
• Probable outcome, which derives from the probability of choice and the probable effectiveness.
3.8 Design principles
For foster active adaptation, F. Emery (1967, 1977) proposed the design of an organization according to two design principles. There are two organisational design principles proposed by F. Emery (Emery, 2000). The first design principle, DP1 (also called redundancy of parts), is characterized by the fact that at any given time a task can be performed by more parts (people) than it requires, and coordination and control are undertaken by part(s) in at least one level above, i.e., hierarchical governance (Barton and Selsky, 2000). The second design principle, DP2 (also called redundancy of functions), is characterized by the fact that every part may acquire more skills and perform more functions than it can use at any given time, and coordination and control are undertaken by the part accomplishing the task, i.e., democratic governance (Barton and Selsky, 2000).
Table 3.2 Relationships between parameters of open system, parameters of choice behaviour and maladaptations
Parameters Parameter of choice Passive maladaptive Active maladaptive1 L11 Probability of choice Segmentation
represents the separation of means and
ends; parts pursue their own ends independent of the ends of the whole.
Authoritarianism or law and order is manifested by
using power of the parts to achieve the ends of the whole system.
L21 Probable
effectiveness Dissociation is the manifestation of a lack of coordination and collaboration between the parts in the whole feeding the “us” and
“them” vision; commitments are made
only for the group.
Evangelicism occurs when
homonymous tendencies are dominant. L12 Probability of outcome Doomsday is the expression of people feeling powerless to influence outcomes.
Social engineering is the
result of deliberate action of the elite in favour of their most desirable outcomes. L22 Relative intention Superficiality is a
retreat from a turbulent environment due to high uncertainty and high complexity, as a result of which it expresses a reduction in
investment and motivation in outcomes.
Synoptic idealism focuses
on depth; it results from the control of the elite that do not believe in the importance of people’s motivation in effectiveness in producing outcomes.
(Adapted from Alvarez and Emery (2000), 1 (Crombie, 1972)
3.9 Inter-organizational domain and the referent organization
For his part, Trist (1983) defined the inter-organizational domain and the referent organization as a means for active adaptation. Inter-organizational domains concern
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organizational populations where a population “engages with a set of problems, or a societal problem area, which constitutes a domain of common concern for its members” (p. 269). A referent organization should be regulative, not operational, controlled by the stakeholders involved in the domain and not isolated.
CHAPTER 4
RESULTS
This chapter reports our findings with regards to our research questions. The findings are based on data from 24 studies.
4.1 Authors who contributed the most to the ETM-CT
RQ1. Who are the authors who contributed the most to this model?
We cite contributing authors in chronological order of their first publications on the model: Fred E. Emery and Eric L. Trist, Alastair Crombie, Merrelyn Emery, Joseph McCann, John W. Selsky, Oguz N. Babüroǧlu, Don de Guerre, Rossana C. Alvarez, Frank Heller, James Goes, James Lee, Rafael Ramírez, and Madeleine Forssell.
4.2 Authors’ contributions to the ETM-CT
RQ2. How did the authors contribute?
In this subchapter, we present the contributions of authors to the evolution of the ETM-CT. These contributions are organized by author or group of authors for joint contributions.
Fred Emery and Eric Trist. They are the original authors who contributed the most to the model of causal texture.
• They primarily developed the model by adding to the concept of open systems (conceived by von Bertalanffy, 1950);
• They defined the four parameters of an open system (i.e., L11, L22, L12, L21);
• They conceptualized the ideal types of causal texture;
• They proposed the use of shared values between members of a system and its environment as a means for transforming turbulent fields, hence reducing uncertainty and fostering stability (new forms of Type II environments);
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• They specified the relationships between the parameters of choice behaviour and the passive maladaptive responses;
• They conducted the first Search Conference as a means for helping organizational systems to coevolve with their environment by fostering proper active adaptation and ideal seeking (in 1959).
Fred Emery. His contributions are:
• He described in greater detail the texture of the environment types and he gave an historical account of the transition to turbulence;
• He added bureaucratization as a fifth trend towards the emergence of the turbulent environment;
• He derived the passive maladaptive responses to turbulent environments (initially superficiality was also designated as fractionation and fragmentation was used instead of segmentation) from Angyal’s (1941, 1965) dimensions of a dynamic whole;
• He defined the doomsday scenarios as a fourth passive maladaptation;
• He defined passive adaptation planning (satisficing planning and optimizing planning); • He discussed active adaptive planning relative to shared values, desirable future, learning,
decision-making and parameters of choice behaviour; • He proposed a set of ideals (see Table 3.1);
• He discussed the relationship between ideals, maladaptive strategies, parameters of choice behaviour and parameters of open systems;
• He established a correspondence between the parameters of open system, the environment types, learning and planning;
• He developed organizational design through design principles;
• He proposed the Search Conference as a kind of intervention concerning the process of change;
• He highlighted the difference between policy-making and strategy making; • He redefined the role of policy expert.
Eric Trist. His contributions are:
• He matched environmental types with the planning modes of Ackoff (1974);
• He discussed limitations of reductionism and bureaucracy in turbulent environments; • He tackled the transition (adaptive response capabilities) from Type III to Type IV
environments (system characteristics);
• He elaborated the society sectors list and socio-cultural list regarding increasing and decreasing turbulence;
• He discussed the power of the person to reduce turbulence;
• He investigated the development of an inter-organizational domain as an active adaptive strategy to turbulence and presented some of the key characteristics of domain formation; • He specified the role of the referent organization to provide appropriate leadership. He
described its functions and defined various types of referent organizations.
Fred Emery and Merrelyn Emery. Their contributions are:
• They added a new active maladaptive response named “eugenics,” which is the correlate of the “doomsday” passive maladaptive response;
• They stated that ideals must be pursued as a set in order to actively adapt to the environment;
• They noted that Search Conferences could help members of an organization to define a desirable future that integrates all ideals;
• They demonstrated that quantitative data may be obtained from qualitative data of Search Conference results and documented causal path analysis as a method;
• They defined categories and subcategories of codes associated to ideals and maladaptive scenarios. These codes are useful for the thematic analysis of Search Conference data; • They developed the Participative Design Workshop to design or redesign an organization
according to DP2.
Alistair Crombie. His contributions are:
• He defined the active maladaptive responses by drawing on the concept of adaptation, expressed by the directive correlation, developed by Sommerhoff (1950), and the
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conceptualization of living systems, developed by Angyal’s (1941) based on the dimensions of a dynamic whole: vertical or depth dimension, progression or means-end dimension, transverse or breadth dimension;
• He proposed that Angyal’s process left open the possibility that further dimensions might be recognized;
• He correlated the obtained active maladaptive responses to the passive maladaptive ones.
Merrelyn Emery. Her contributions are:
• She stated that a system could be fully characterized only if we can characterize its environment and vice versa. This defined co-implication between a system and its environment (de Guerre, 2000);
• She presented the two-stage model for active adaptation composed of the Search Conference and the Participative Design Workshop;
• She discussed the environment types relatively to the design principles and the main waves of social change over time until 2011;
• She made changes in the Search Conference methodology and modified the codification of subcategories of ideals and maladaptive scenarios.
Joseph McCann and John W. Selsky. Their contributions are:
• They discussed the emergence of the Type V environment, which they called the totally hyperturbulent environment or the partitioned environment and which is the result of escalating turbulence until it becomes endemic. They placed hypertubulence at mid-range between the turbulent environment and the vortical environment;
• They stated that turbulence is related to the perception of the field’s members of their adaptive capacity (either individual or collective) to manage turbulence;
• They discussed limitations of collaboration as an adaptive response to turbulent environments;
• They explained that ineffective partitioning, which is initially an adaptive response, makes hyperturbulence endemic;
• They identified maladaptive processes: social enclave, which “is a domain of less turbulent, more manageable social space that is created and protected by one or more members” (McCann and Selsky, 1984, p. 465) and social vortex, which “contains members who collectively lack sufficient adaptive capacity relative to prevailing environmental conditions”(McCann and Selsky, 1984, p. 466)
• They proposed, based in part on the work of McCann, Selsky and Lee (2009), agility and resiliency as two of the most critical elements for sustaining, and even building, superior performance in increasingly turbulent environments;
• They highlighted the mutual correlation between agility and resiliency and recommended that they be considered together for adaptation;
• They described the characteristics of highly agile and resilient individuals, teams, organizations and ecosystems;
• They proposed an organizing model to guide the development of high agility and resiliency.
Oguz N. Babüroǧlu. His contributions are:
• He showed the existence of signs and trends of vortical environments; • He conceptualized the vortical environment;
• He defined the maladaptive responses present in this environment, building on Angyal’s (1941) dimensions of dynamic whole and passive maladaptive responses described in Emery (1977). These maladaptive responses are stalemate, which is being stuck in the middle of a transition as the parts of the system are not purposeful and pursue their own means-ends purposes; polarization, which is often represented by intense ingroup-outgroup dynamics; monothematic dogmatism, which is to perceive the reality as absolute. These maladaptive responses are crystallization of maladaptive responses to turbulent environment and “Maladaptions are active responses in the sense that they emerge as remedies to the perplexity of turbulent environments” (Babüroǧlu, 1988, p. 199). He considered it impossible to formulate a set of passive maladaptive responses; • He discussed adaptation strategy to this environment;
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• He noted that Trist (1984) highlighted the novel contribution of Angyal in thinking of dynamics of systems through the conceptualization of the inter-relation between the system and the environment..
Don de Guerre. His contributions are:
• He showed the need for directive correlation between cultural change in an organization and change in the organization’s environment to ensure the sustainability of the cultural change in the organization (one cannot develop companies without developing countries); • He also showed, by using Sommerhoff’s (1969) model of adaptation, that organizations
and environments are co-implicative through cultural change.
Rossana C. Alvarez and Merrelyn Emery. Their contributions are:
• They improved the Search Conference methodology and, based on the method of Emery and Emery (1979), developed a method to obtain quantitative data from qualitative data, after enlarging the scope of the initial method;
• They changed “eugenics” maladaption (Emery and Emery, 1979) to “social engineering.”
Frank Heller. His contributions are:
• He extended joint optimization to be achieved between three systems: the social, the technical and the ecological;
• He stated that the influence from the organization to the environment, in the causal texture model, was not developed.
John W. Selsky, James Goes and Oguz N. Babüroǧlu. Their contributions are:
• They compared two strategies of adaptation to turbulence: the neoclassical perspective and the socioecological one. They stated that the two perspectives have different conceptualizations of turbulence;
• They gave the characteristics of the socioecological perspective: It is field focused, meaning that sets of players with varying interests constitute the field. It is holistic, which is expressed by considering the organization’s social structures and cultural contexts in
decision-making. It is future responsive, which is translated by taking into account both long- and short-term effects and repercussions of action in decision-making. And it has a collective and whole view mode of sense-making, which induces collaboration and deliberation in decision making;
• They defined properties of hyperenvironments (hypercompetition (D’Aveni, 1994) and hyperturbulence (McCann and Selsky, 1984)).
Joseph McCann, John W. Selsky and James Lee. Their contributions are:
• They highlighted the importance of agility and resiliency to foster adaptive capacity; • They suggested the development of both to achieve active adaptation;
• They proposed the introduction of scenario planning.
Rafael Ramirez and Madeleine Forssell. Their contribution is:
• They discussed the importance of developing scenarios to face turbulence.
John W. Selsky, Rafael Ramirez and Oguz N. Babüroǧlu . Their contributions are:
• They proposed a third design principle, DP3 (Redundancy of Potentialities), arguing that it may design or redesign social fields at levels of inter-organizations, organizations and teams to encourage creative collaboration; however, they focussed on inter-organizations; • They noted that DP3 was already widespread in practice;
• They reported that the purpose of DP3 is to identify potential connections and capabilities existing in trans-organizations; and that it supports innovation more explicitly than DP2.
Table 4.1 lists the main contributing authors we identified as well as the key concepts they contributed to. Note that the key contributions per study are summarized in Appendix III.
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Table 4.1 Main contributing authors and main contributions
Authors Parameters of open
system Types of causal textu re Ideals Maladap tive strategies Parameters of choice behavior
Design principles Search Conference
Participa tive Design Workshop Adaptation ( *) Inter -org anization al domain Re fe re nt or ga ni za ti on Fred E. Emery X X X X X X X X X Eric L. Trist X X X X X X X X X Alastair Crombie X X Merrelyn Emery X X X X X X Joseph McCann X X X John W. Selsky X X X X Oguz N. Babüroǧlu X X X X Don de Guerre X X X Rossana C. Alvarez X X X Frank Heller X X James Goes X X James Lee X Rafael Ramírez X X Madeleine Forssell X
CHAPTER 5
DISCUSSION
Our third research question (RQ3) (What are the similarities and differences between these authors?) is addressed in this chapter.
5.1 Convergences between authors
In general, the authors agreed about the open character of organizations and existence of a bidirectional relationship of mutual influence between an organization and its environment. They also agreed on the main characteristics of the first four causal texture types and that organizations experience turbulent conditions that intensify if they do not adapt to turbulent environments. They also agreed on several principles of adaptation.
5.2 Divergences between authors
The review of the selected studies led us to identify divergences between authors. Each divergence is discussed separately; the order of presentation does not represent levels of importance.
Meaning of the term system
There seems to be divergences of opinions with regards to the meaning of the term system. Emery (2000) discussed divergences between Fred Emery and Eric Trist about what can be considered a system. For Fred Emery, the definition of a system includes a network of organizations, while for Trist, it does not. Consequently, Trist defined the concept of an inter-organizational domain.
This divergence raises the possibility that other authors might implicitly have diverging views on the meaning of the term system. Bringing clarity to the implicit meaning of the term as used by various authors could emerge new insights about their contributions. Obviously, if
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there is confusion in the meaning of “system,” an author may explain an organization’s strategy as adaptive when, in fact, it may be maladaptive.
Correspondence between open system parameters and the behaviours related to parameters of choice
Multiple correspondences between the open systems parameters and the behaviours related to parameters of choice can be found. In Emery and Emery (1979), there is a difference in the correspondence between open system parameters and parameters of choice behaviour related to Emery (1977). More precisely, there was a permutation between L12 and L21: L12 and L21
were associated with probability of outcome and probable effectiveness, respectively in Emery and Emery (1979) instead of probable effectiveness and probability of outcome, respectively, in Emery (1977). However, we were not capable of verifying if this modification was a contribution of that paper or another.
Beyond investigating the origins of the permutation, no literature could be found that discussed the implications of such a change. This should be investigated further because it could have important implications for the understanding, validation and evolution of the ETM-CT model. This divergence raises some important questions, such as why did the authors perform these modifications?, what is the value of these correspondences for organizations’ adaptation? and what would happen if these correspondences were used to identify maladaptive responses in scenarios planning of organizations’ environments?
Correspondence between open system parameters and Angyal’s dimensions of a dynamic whole
There is a difference between Emery (1977) and Babüroǧlu (1988) concerning the correspondence between the open system parameters and Angyal’s dimensions of a dynamic whole. Indeed, while Emery associated L12, L11 and L22 to the transverse, progression and
vertical dimensions, respectively, Babüroǧlu associated L11, L12 and L21 to those dimensions
without mentioning the reasons for these modifications. In addition, Babüroǧlu used Emery (1977) to conceptualize the vortical environment.
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